This application claims the priority of German patent document 101 43 551.7, filed Sep. 6, 2001, the disclosure of which is expressly incorporated by reference herein.
The invention relates to an actuator arrangement for actuating vehicle assemblies.
In known devices of this generic type, various vehicle assemblies such as the engine, gearbox, brakes or the like are each controlled or regulated by one or more control units that are assigned thereto. Such control units receive and process input data to form output data for the assigned vehicle assemblies.
A control unit architecture which is distributed in this way is very complex. Moreover, fault management with such decentralized control unit architecture is also complex, particularly if electrically or electronically actuated vehicle assemblies that are critical for safety (for example, steering or brakes) are to be configured redundantly.
One object of the present invention is to provide a device for actuating vehicle assemblies which can be implemented with little expenditure.
Another object of the invention is to provide such a device which at the same time permits simple and reliable fault management.
These and other objects and advantages are achieved by the actuator device according to the invention, in which a single central arithmetic unit is provided for all the vehicle assemblies, so that the expenditure incurred for components can be considerably reduced. The central arithmetic unit with the software modules provided therein permits a very simple fault management system. If redundancy of the software modules is required, they can be provided with redundancy within a common central arithmetic unit, and/or in a further central arithmetic unit identical to the first central arithmetic unit, so that hardware redundancy is also provided.
A further advantage of the central arithmetic unit with the software modules is that the device can be easily extended. As vehicles are generally not equipped identically, heretofore for different vehicle equipment levels it was also necessary to provide a different control unit architecture with respectively different cabling. For example, these can be vehicles with or without level control or with or without xe2x80x9cactive body controlxe2x80x9d (vehicle assembly for compensating rolling and pitching movements of the vehicle body). In the device according to the invention, the central arithmetic unit can basically be embodied identically, with all the software modules necessary to actuate all the possible vehicle assemblies being provided. If a specific vehicle assembly is not present in the vehicle into which the device is to be installed, the respective software modules in the central arithmetic unit are simply deactivated.
Other objects, advantages and novel features of the present invention will become apparent from the following detailed description of the invention when considered in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.